If anyone could be pegged as the face of Fox’s X-Men film franchise, it’d have to be Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. From the very start, that particular mutant commanded a fair amount of screentime – not to mention headlining three flicks of his own. Granted, some may argue how he occupied too much of the spotlight, but it goes without saying that character was a hit well before making his way to the live action realm.
So, when casual moviegoers shuffle into cinemas this weekend to enjoy X-Men: Dark Phoenix, they may half-expect Wolvie to show up. Hating to be the bearer of bad news, I guess I’ll have to say that won’t happen. I know, he’s a been a fixture of the series, even if as a cameo, but you can’t win every time.
Aside from the fact that Logan served as Jackman’s sendoff in 2017, director Simon Kinberg offered Rolling Stone another reason for why he’s absent from the next entry into the franchise:
“If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you’d want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean. And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn’t sit well with me. Or anyone else!”
In a way, that makes sense due to the age gap separating those two actors, but Wolverine sure does age gracefully. And is it just me, or does next to nobody complain when a 200-year-old vampire romances teenage girls? Those bloodsuckers may appear youthful themselves, but that’s some world class cradle robbing.
But as Kinberg continued, he made another fine point:
“There was an element of this being Jean’s story. And I was committing so fully to it that I didn’t want to run the risk of pulling away from Jean by going to the well of a fan-favorite character in these movies. I wanted this to be a very different experience of seeing an X-Men movie.”
As mentioned earlier, Wolverine does steal the focus a lot, so it’s understandable he remain out of the picture this time around. Still, leaving his earlier encounter with Jean in Apocalypse as it was is quite the dangling plot thread. Hopefully everything is sorted out well though once X-Men: Dark Phoenix arrives in theaters this Friday, June 7th.
